PHOTO COURTESY NAUTIQUE

Very few companies survive for 100 years. In fact, less than 1% do. The company I lead, Correct Craft, celebrates its 100th birthday in 2025. We are celebrating not just what our team is doing today, but also what the thousands of folks who went before us did to lay the foundation for our current success.

This is my 19th year leading Correct Craft, and much of the foundation our team is building upon was laid before I arrived. Still, I have a good enough understanding of our history — I wrote a book about it — to have identified the top factors that allowed our company to thrive for a century. The following values were essential in our organization and will help any organization improve their odds of lasting 100 years.

• Integrity Operating with integrity has been a must, from our founder to today’s company leaders. Correct Craft’s history is filled with stories of leaders making tough decisions to maintain their integrity. People still share stories about how Correct Craft lived out its integrity decades ago. Because of these amazing stories, people want to sell to us, buy from us and work with us. Sure, there were some short-term costs to maintaining our values over the years, but those costs were investments that pay huge dividends today.

Leaders, even those who embrace the importance of integrity, often believe that maintaining an organization’s values is expensive. This is often true in the short run. However, in the long run, operating ethically pays huge dividends. Leaders should do what is right because it is right, not because of future benefits. However, my experience is that doing right pays off big time in the long run.

• A steadfast mission In 1925, our founder, W.C. Meloon, established Correct Craft with the mission of “Building Boats to the Glory of God.” We still embrace that mission. We are not a church or a cult, but we have remained steadfast in the values that flow out of that mission, including our Why of “Making Life Better.” We want everyone we interact with to be better because of their connection with us. Oddly enough, we have even hosted events from which our competitors have attended and benefited. It’s not just talk with our team; we want to make life better for everyone.

• Culture Near the end of World War II, Correct Craft faced down the Pentagon over whether employees would work on Sunday to build boats the Allies needed to cross the Rhine River in Germany. Fifteen years later, the company was willing to face bankruptcy rather than pay a bribe to a government inspector. Then the company spent 20 years paying back debts from the bankruptcy, something it had no legal obligation to do.

During the last 20 years, we have invested heavily in serving both our local communities and many others worldwide. People want to be part of an organization that has a higher mission. Correct Craft is known for using its platform to help people around the world. This effort energizes our team and helps drive our success.

• Great product Nearly 20 years ago, during the turnaround of Correct Craft, our team knew we needed to return to our historical level of compelling product and product quality. I repeatedly told them, “Without great product, nothing else matters.” An organization can have both good people and a good culture, but without a market-driving product, it will not last 100 years. In many market segments, Correct Craft has consistently built great products for a century, without which nothing else would have mattered.

• Innovation A company will not survive long in the boating industry without innovation. While the center-engine, inboard ski boat and wakeboard tower are a couple of innovations for which Correct Craft is well-known, the company has also been awarded hundreds of patents for innovations built into our boats and engines. Out of 36,000 companies in our industry, Correct Craft has been recognized a couple of times by Soundings Trade Only as the industry’s most innovative. If we know one thing about the boating market it is that innovation drives sales.

• Grit A lot of challenging things happen during the course of 100 years. Stock market crashes, the Great Depression and recessions, wars, inflation, gas rationing, the attacks of 9/11 and a couple of pandemics. But the companies that survive for a century have the grit and determination needed to not only make it through these events, but also come out of them better.

• Team Any company’s success ultimately depends on its people. The values I’ve listed here had to be planned and executed by people. In fact, when there is a challenge, great organizations don’t think about how to deal with it; they think about who can solve it. “Think who, not how,” is a philosophy we still embrace today.

It is rare for an organization to survive for 100 years. It takes a combination of great people, culture, strategy and competency to make it happen. Fortunately, Correct Craft has demonstrated those qualities in excess since 1925, much of it before I got here. When I arrived near the end of 2006, the company was in trouble, and I was the fifth CEO in five years. However, we were fortunate to have decades of good decisions that provided a foundation for the turnaround we would execute.

Today, we embrace our past and have built upon it, growing a $40-million company in 2009 to a $1-plus-billion business in 2023. Keeping a company alive for 100 years is difficult, but it can be done. Our team is already thinking about the next 100. If you want to learn more about what has helped Correct Craft thrive, email me at [email protected] with your name and mailing address, and we will send you a copy of my book Making Life Better: The Correct Craft Story.

Bill Yeargin is CEO of Correct Craft and the author of six books, including the best-seller Education of a CEO.